correct proportion the various troops that must sustain each other when
cannons and explosives begin that arbitration from which there is no
appeal on earth. It is the division, and the division alone, that
possesses all the limbs and organs--the signal corps and cavalry that
are the eyes and ears: the infantry and engineers and sanitary corps
that are the body and feet: and the artillery that is the smiting
fists.[52]
In the City Hall Park in New York, a speaker, lifted above the crowd
that watched the newspaper bulletins, was cursing the army amid savage
cheers. He cursed its Generals and its men because they did not fight.
He cursed the Government.
The crowd listened, and forgot that again and again they had been warned
that this would be if war should ever come.
With the blind wrath of helpless men they could reason only that at this
moment when everything should be done, nothing was being done. They
shouted approval when the frantic orator screamed: “Tell Washington to
order ’em to fight. Fight! Fight! That’s what they’re for!”
The crowds could perceive only that they had an army that did not strike
a blow. They could not know that the American commanders were fighting a
better fight just then by fighting to organize, than if they fought with
guns. They could not know that to these officers, grown gray in the
service of their country, this fight was more heart-breaking than it
would have been to fight in the hot blast of shells.
_Regiments of Infantry Without a Single Cannon to Protect Them_
To organize an army in the face of the foe is like organizing a fire
department when the streets of a city are already in flames. This is
what the Chiefs of the Army were trying to do--had been doing, day and
night, desperately, ever since the troops had come together. And in
Washington, in the archives of Congress, there were lying sheaves of
reports, gathering dust, that had demanded nothing except the chance to
do it in time.
Here were regiments of militia so “organized” by their States that if
they were permitted to go into battle as they were, 170 companies of
infantry would face the enemy without a single cannon to protect them.
Of all the eastern militia cavalry in that camp, only one regiment had a
machine gun company.[53]
Even the regular army was efficient only in those things that could be
maintained and perfected by the steady, personal efforts of officers and
men. In everything that depended on legislation it was lacking. Instead
of 150 men to a company of infantry some had only 65. Its troops of
cavalry were not full. It had no siege artillery corps. It was a
skeleton army which, according to optimists, was to be clothed with
substance when war arrived. Now war had come; and to clothe that
skeleton with untrained men would have meant that for every 65 skilled
soldiers there would be 85 utterly useless ones in each company.
Shortage of men was not the only curse that was laid on the army by the
policy of neglect. In the enemy headquarters, two or at the most three
orders were sent to department chiefs for every movement. In the
American headquarters, the staff had to deal with units. Every problem
had to be handled in detail by men who should have been free to direct
one great, comprehensive movement. Every order issued by the Commanding
General demanded intolerable duplication.
_American Commanders Who Had Never Commanded_
The General had under him commanders of brigade who had commanded posts
that contained only fragments of regiments. Their brigades, never
assembled in any one place, not only did not approximate to war
conditions, but had to be disrupted and divided and re-formed before the
General could dare to offer them in battle. Hardly a brigade commander
had under him troops that he had known and trained and handled
himself.[54]
With exception of those who had been on the Mexican border, when a part
of the small army had been mobilized in a body for the first time, these
men had tried to prepare themselves with the best that Congress would
give them--battalions and companies and single batteries instead of
assembled armies, because the politicians would not let the army come
together.
The 49 army posts of the United States, long a subject of derision among
all except those who fattened on them, might well have been symbolized
now in that camp by forty-nine skeletons--a skeleton army waiting to
lead the other skeleton army to death.[55]
To none was this better known than to the enemy. The invaders’
commander, standing idly with his hands in his pockets, was able to say
confidently: “They’ll not bother us seriously. The only thing they’ll
do, the only thing they _can_ do, is to retreat when we begin to
threaten them.”
He held in his grip the sea, the land and the air. In shore lay ships
ready to sweep part of his front with protective fire. On land his
advance forces had seized roads and railroads, his engineers were
repairing what had been destroyed, and his cavalry was guarding all
approaches. His air-men, overwhelmingly numerous, spied on the American
army almost with impunity, and parried with sure aerial thrusts all
American attempts to spy on their own lines.
The aerial guard, steel-breasted, with the wings of speed and talons of
fire, could be broken only by equal numbers, equally terrible.
Individual daring, individual skill, were nothing against this armored
brood. Five times American fliers rose to try it; and five times they
were grappled in mid-air and torn with shot, and dropped to the earth
far below. “No more!” said the General in command.
He sat with his chin in his hand, studying the dispatches that were laid
before him. They were piled high, though twenty operators and half a
dozen aides struggled to eliminate from the torrential confusion the
news that might be deemed most reliable.[56]
_The “Fog of War”_
There were messages from Washington, messages from coast defenses,
messages from patrols and outposts, from scouts and from company
commanders. There were wild reports of enemy invasion from places so far
inland that it was palpable that they could not be true. There were
reports from places so nearby that they might mean imminent danger.
Excited officials of towns and cities sent long, involved dispatches or
hung for long minutes to telephones to recount interminable tales.
One hundred thousand men had landed, according to spies who had made
their way into Fort Greble in the Narragansett defenses. It was two
hundred thousand, telephoned Providence, transmitting messages from the
coast. The army’s own scouts and spies and patrols, groping in
insufficient numbers and finding a wall of cavalry and foot and machine
gun detachments opposed to them everywhere, sent in estimates that
varied all the way from twenty-five thousand to eighty thousand.
These American advance detachments were striking the enemy outposts east
and west. Near Watch Hill three American motor cycle companies with
machine guns ambushed and cut up two troops of cavalry. American cavalry
drove back a battalion of engineers who had begun work on the railroad
at Kingston. At Niantic two American motor patrols ran into the fire of
a concealed field gun and were destroyed.
From Fort Michie on Gull Island came the news, brought by a Montauk
Point fisherman who had managed to make his way across the Sound in a
small boat, that men had landed on that end of Long Island. They had
destroyed all communication immediately and had seized the railroad
leading to New York; but it was impossible to guess how great this force
was.[57]
Only one certain fact was developed from all the news. It was that the
transports were unloading troops still.
_The Enemy Moves_
Suddenly, almost simultaneously, the American patrols were driven back
all along the line. On a front that extended quickly, irresistibly,
clear across Washington County, Rhode Island, from east to west, the
invader army expanded. It seized Watch Hill. Kingston was occupied in
force. Wickford Junction was occupied. Narragansett Pier was flooded,
all at once, with men and guns.
With the swiftness of a blow from a fighter’s fist, the invader had
struck and won the entire railroad system of the New York, New Haven and
Hartford Railroad in Rhode Island, and commanded the way to Providence.
The foe had filled his divisions. Forty thousand men were ready for
battle on American soil, with ten thousand in reserve on the coast.
Now the wind turned south-east. Point Judith, Rhode Island’s cape that
coast-wise mariners call The Fog-Hole, began to brew one of its April
fogs, gray and blind and wet.
Its first effect was kind to the Americans. The enemy air-craft, seeing
the vapory bank growing from the sea, fled toward their lines. From all
directions they came in, like gulls fleeing before a storm. They could
not dare to remain in strange territory. All their fine maps, all their
ingenious instruments, would be impotent against it. They came in, and
alighted behind their army.
Freed from them, and masked by the fog, the American scouts went forward
again and groped once more along the foe’s front. In an
[Illustration: MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE LANDING OF THE ENEMY FORCES
=A.= _Enemy Transports at Beach. The lines and arrows show direction of
his advance._
=B.= _United States Army, withdrawn to a watching position._]
hour field telephones and telegraphs and aerial told the American
commander enough to assure him that the enemy’s force in men was at
least nearly equal to his own. He knew, too, that the invader had
brought up preponderating artillery. Every road, every piece of
negotiable country was held by guns.
The American army held tight. In its front, between it and the foe,
there was not a rail-line, not a bridge. All had been destroyed. Behind
it lay a perfect railroad system, with long trains and giant locomotives
under steam, and all the gathered motor vehicles, ready to speed along
perfect roads.
So far the fog was kind to the defenders. But the invader, too, was
quick to seize its favor.
_The Fishermen Who Caught More Than Lobsters_
Long before, half a dozen men, dressed like fishermen, had made their
way out of Narragansett Harbor in a small sloop, and had reported at the
enemy headquarters. For a month or more past they had been fishing for
lobsters; but they had caught more than lobsters. Their catch lay on
the table in the Commander’s tent, in the form of charts with soundings
and range lines and distances. They were maps of the mine fields.
As soon as the fog began, these men went aboard a mine-sweeper. It
steamed eastward, followed by the others. The sweepers had more than the
cables and grapples that make a mine-sweeper’s outfit. Set in rows on
the after-deck of each vessel were bulging mines, filled with 300 pounds
of trinitrotol.[58]
The fog became so thick that it was hard to say if it were daylight
still, or night. Night could only make it more black. It could not
increase the obscurity.
In the coast defenses of Long Island Sound and Narragansett Bay every
man was straining eyes and ears and nerves. Every gun company was at its
weapon. Every gun was loaded. Tall projectiles stood ready with the
chains and grapples of the hoists prepared. Men stood waiting in the
powder magazines under the batteries.
Nothing to see or hear at Fort Wright on Fisher’s Island. Nothing at
Fort Michie on Gull Island. Nothing at Fort Terry on Plum Island. On all
the shrouded, swift tide-ways that led into Long Island Sound there was
nothing.
There was nothing in front of the Narragansett defenses that eyes could
see or ears could hear. Nothing--and then, far out, it was as if a
sea-monster had arisen in dying torment, and lashed, and spouted and
screamed. Before the riven column of water could fall, there came
muffled, thundering explosion under water--one, two, three!
The defenses split the fog with fire. Their mine-protecting batteries
had been trained over the fields long since. There was no need for aim.
Instantly they swept the hidden sea with shells that would clear twenty
acres of water.
Again there was silence and blindness--the unearthly silence of the
Atlantic sea-fog. It lay for half an hour, as if there were no such
thing as war in the world.
Then once more came the roar and the crash, followed by its submarine
echoes. Once more the land-guns raved, firing blind.
_Fighting Mines with Mines_
The enemy was counter-mining. Instead of sweeping, his vessels were
dropping mines of their own in the fields, and then, backing off to
avoid the fire from the batteries if they could, they exploded them by
electric contact, to blow up the American mines with the shock.
Not all the mine-sweepers escaped mines or guns. But there were vessels
to spare, and lives to spare. All night the counter-mining went on, and
all night the American guns fired into the vapor and the darkness.
The sun arose invisibly. But it climbed, and when it had lifted all its
disk above the rim of sea, it showed through the mist as a pale
illumination. It was “burning off” the fog.
“It will be clear enough in an hour,” said the executive officer of a
battleship under Block Island. The vessel’s wireless began to speak.
On one of the mother-ships men brought out and assembled an armored
biplane. Its two fliers stowed range-finding apparatus, aerial
telegraph, aneroids and charts in it. There were signal flags and light,
brightly silvered balls. Men brought receptacles that contained bombs
and adjusted them carefully in place. The fliers waited, watching the
fog.
It lessened. It tore away in rifts. All around, the ships became
visible.
Seven battle-ships swung around and put on speed and rushed in echelon
toward the coast. They steered straight for the mouth of Narragansett
Bay, turned just outside of the zone of fire of its defenses, slowed
down and steamed across the mouth.
The bi-plane’s engine burst into life. The machine lifted and followed
them. It flew high over them and into the bay, climbing.
“They’re over it!” said an officer on a ship, looking at the machine
through his glasses.
_Locating the Forts For the Enemy Ships_
Far inside of the bay, so high in air that it was little more than a
shining speck, the aeroplane was describing a series of regular, equal
circles. All at once, as if it had been painted in the air with a
mammoth brush, a jet-black descending streak stood out against the sky,
and lengthened steadily toward the earth.
The azimuth and other range-finding instruments at both ends of the
battle-ships caught
[Illustration: “The forward turret of a battleship turned and spoke with
a great voice.”]
the angles and ascertained the range to the black smear that still hung
in the air, like grease. The aviator had dropped a smoke-bomb to
indicate the fort below.
The forward turret of a battleship turned, its hooded rifle lifted its
muzzle to an angle of fifteen degrees, and spoke with a great voice.
Eleven miles away a ton of steel rushed from the sky, crashed into the
water of the bay roaring, ricochetted, struck again half a mile beyond,
and again and again. Four times it rebounded, like a pebble, before it
disappeared at last; and each time it filled the air with its clamor,
like a suffering thing.[59]
The ships’ wireless caught a signal from the aeroplane. The shot had
fallen short. The battleship steamed on, and another one in line opened
up the mouth of the harbor and fired.
From the aeroplane fell a silver ball. It glittered in the brightening
sun, splendid. “Hit!” went the message to the turret; and the crew there
embraced and cheered.
It had hit the outer earth-works of the defenses. It had plunged down
with a shock that stunned men in mortar pits and gun-emplacements far
away--small wonder, for this thing falling from the sky had struck a
blow equal to that of New York’s obelisk plunging into Broadway from the
top of Trinity Church steeple.[60]
“_No Effect!_”
“No effect!” reported the watchers in the coast defense to the
commandant. Though the impact had shaken the works and the very earth:
though the blast from the explosion of its charge had twisted three-inch
iron bars within the works, and bent the steel doors of casemates, it
had done no harm to the defenses. So well had they been built by the
engineers that the rending explosion left a crater for only a moment.
The earth rippled down and closed it. The steel and concrete facing
underneath held true.[61]
The enemy had the range. Ship after ship passed the entrance, delivered
its single shot, proceeded and returned to follow in the circling line.
These were the most modern dreadnaughts, firing from 16-inch guns. Their
shells tore the earth embankments away in tons and flung dirt high in
air and sent it down to bury everything in its way under mounds. But all
their fire and all their havoc was in vain, unless they could hit a gun.
And the guns were protected by steel armor and concrete and earth piled
on earth.
To hit a gun was to attempt to hit a bull’s eye only a few feet square
at a range of eleven miles, farther than men can see.
Still the bombardment went on, undeterred. More aeroplanes soared over
the defenses now, far out of reach from shots, and circled and signaled.
The fire grew. The ships were not hesitating now to wear out the rifling
of their guns. They meant to give the defenders no rest.
They were trying for a prize that was worth all the guns in their
turrets. They knew that inside of the works there could not be more than
a few thousand men, if that much. They knew that all the Coast
Artillery forces of the United States combined numbered only 170
companies and that these 170 companies had 27 harbor defense systems to
guard. Even if the United States had stripped its other defenses to the
utmost, there could not be a sufficient force in these that were now
being attacked.[62]
_Only Enough Ammunition to Last Two Hours_
So they poured fire on fire and shot on shot. It was a one-sided duel,
for their great guns outranged the 12-inch guns of the defenses. The men
in there fired only occasionally, when their observers and range-finders
and plotters perceived an opportunity. There was another reason for
their slow fire, besides the inability to reach. Those perfect defenses,
those perfect products of engineering science, those results of millions
on millions of expenditure, contained only enough ammunition for two
hours of firing![63]
They waited till the enemy ships should try to force the passage and
come within range, that they might make those two hours two hours of
unspeakable destruction that should glorify their death with the fiery
splendor of bursting ships.
The enemy did not try to force the passage. While they saved their
ammunition, these defenses were fearful gladiators to approach. None
could come within reach of their steel hands and live.
But the gladiators were gladiators fearful only in front.
Steel-gauntleted, armored with steel breast-plates and shin-plates,
mightily visored--so they faced the sea. In the back they were naked.
Fire, and noise, and bursting charges, and explosions that made hot
gales within the works and whirled men like dried leaves! An hour
passed. Still from the sea there came the coughing bellow, that made the
air tremble and rolled inland like summer thunder among hills. Still
there fell the screaming steel from the sky. Another hour! And still it
came.
The sun was over-head. Suddenly, into the naked back of the defenses
poured fire and steel that hammered and beat and tore through them.
Under it, through flame and smoke and flying dirt appeared shining rows
of bayonets. With a yelp 10,000 men poured in.[64]
And through the United States, smiting it into the dumbness of despair,
went the news that the great Narragansett defenses had fallen, and that
the enemy fleet was entering the harbor.
V
NEW ENGLAND’S BATTLE
America had lost Narragansett Bay, with all its defenses, great guns and
government stations, in less than two weeks after the declaration of
war!
The generation that faced this disaster had faced many catastrophes
which had seemed great disasters. It had seen States razed by cyclones.
It had seen giant floods. It had seen magnificent cities thrown down by
a shaking earth. Unterrified, it had flung money and men to the stricken
places to make them whole. Destroyed cities rose in beauty almost before
the dust of their fall had ceased to veil the sun.
Money, money, money! Men, men, men! It seemed that no disaster could be
so colossal that the wonderful resources and efficiency of the United
States could not mock at it.
Before the news of Narragansett’s fall was an hour old, the cities of
the United States, including many towns so obscure that few Americans
ever had heard their names, had subscribed enough money to raise and
equip an army twice over and keep it in the field for months. But the
country that was so efficient, so intrepid, so resourceful, was facing a
disaster now that it could not conjure away with all the money and men
that ever were.
Money, the magician, was futile now. It could not stamp its golden foot
and make guns and ammunition spring from the empty ground. It could not
send to the army in Connecticut cannon that did not exist or cartridges
that had not been made.[65]
_Not Enough American Ammunition for Two Days’ Battle_
An order had gone out from the American headquarters that morning--an
ominous warning that, given in battle, would have indicated, surely,
the beginning of the end. It was:
“IT IS OF THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE THAT NO AMMUNITION BE EXPENDED
WITHOUT URGENT NEED. COMPANY COMMANDERS WILL ENFORCE THIS ORDER
RIGOROUSLY.”
While the futile dollars were being flung to the Government for new
armies, the army that was already in the field was counting its
small-arms and artillery ammunition, knowing that it did not possess
enough for two days’ battle.[66]
From ocean to ocean men with naked hands were crowding to enlist. The
generous Nation that never yet had denied a need when the need was made
apparent, was as generous with its lives as with its dollars. For two
and three blocks around the recruiting stations of regular army and
militia the streets were packed with men. They had come from work and
pleasure. They had come home from far places. They had dropped shovels
and tennis-rackets, pens and picks. They stood shoulder to shoulder, in
fine stuffs and in rags, made equal by one loyal purpose. And they were
as futile as the dollars.
One million men, it was computed afterward, had offered themselves in
America in that one day. But there were no weapons for them. There were
not enough rifles. There were no uniforms. There were no tents. There
were no shoes.
Keen-eyed men of trails and wilderness offered themselves for the signal
corps. There were no signal corps supplies. Telegraphers were there, but
all the field telegraph outfits that the country had were with the army.
Teamsters volunteered, but there was no reserve of army wagons. Men
trained in bridge building and engineering were turned away, because
there was no equipment to fit out sorely needed companies of miners and
sappers.[67]
Cavalry was needed, urgently; and men who could ride tried to enlist.
But there were no mounts for them. Army officers in Texas and New
Mexico and Oklahoma were buying, at unheard-of prices, rough horses wild
from the range, while in Connecticut were regiments of regular cavalry
whose troops were only three-quarters filled with either men or
horses.[68]
Money, money, money! Men, men, men! It was too late.
_Newport’s Palaces Occupied by Enemy Officers_
The bulletins still were displaying the news of the loss of
Narragansett’s defenses when the mine-sweepers of the enemy, unhampered
now, completed their work in the channels of the great harbor and
signaled to their fleet that it was safe to enter.
The big liners crowded in--ships that hitherto never had entered an
American harbor except New York or Boston. Followed by horse-transports
and vessels laden with artillery, they passed in a gigantic parade past
Newport.
Only destroyers and light-draught gun-boats preceded them. There was no
further need of cruisers with shotted guns to protect them. The enemy
flag was flying over Forts Adam, Wetherill, Greble, Getty, and Philip
Kearney. The American guns which the garrison had not been able to
destroy now looked down the harbor to hold it for the invader against
American attack.